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NEW YORK, April 23: Pakistan told the International Monetary Fund on Tuesday that the Poverty Reduction Growth Facility (PRGF) would be the last Fund programme in Pakistan.
“We will not ask the IMF for any more money,” Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz told the IMF Managing Director, Horst Kohler, and other top officials of the Fund at a meeting in Washington before flying to New York to attend the United Nations Economic and Social Committee (ECOSOC) meeting here.
Talking to Dawn, Shaukat Aziz, however, noted: “We can get money from other financial institutions but the PRGF would be last IMF programme in Pakistan.”
“The PRGF was a three-year programme, two more years are left and we hope to complete the programme satisfactorily, after that there will be no further need of IMF assistance,” he added.
Shaukat Aziz told the IMF officials that Pakistan’s current account reserves have risen substantially and the government’s objectives remain to increase investment, accelerate privatisation and enhance public sector infrastructure spending, thereby creating economic growth and reducing poverty and create jobs.
He said at the IMF meeting which was also attended by the US Treasury Secretary, Paul Neil, and Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank, Alan Greenspan, the participants spoke about the US economic recovery in the first quarter and expected that the trend would continue.
“From Pakistan’s perspective this should result in better export orders from the United states although pricing will remain an issue. The pricing power in the US economy is limited. What it means that orders are coming but prices do not change,” he said.
REGIONAL TRADE: Speaking at a meeting of MIT’s World Economic Laboratory on the subject of “Prospects for Peace and Finance in Pakistan and the Region,” Shaukat Aziz observed that the mutual trade in the region had been stagnant and the share of intra-regional trade viz-a-viz the rest of the world had been less than 5 per cent.
He warned: “In the rapidly changing global trading environment the current state of intra-South Asian trade is discouraging. If South Asia does not make special efforts to strengthen economic ties, it is feared that the region will be completely sidelined in the world trading system,” Shaukat Aziz said.
He told the world economic managers that there were many opportunities for progress in all South Asian countries. The first and foremost task for each member state is to improve governance in their respective country by minimizing corruption, pursuing a transparent and consistent economic policy and strengthening rule of law. Secondly, the countries in the region must enhance economic cooperation among themselves, he added.
Economic cooperation in the fold of regionalism is taking place in many parts of the world but South Asia has remained deprived of the benefits of such a move. Physical propinquity notwithstanding, the South Asian region presents a dismal picture of intra-regional trade, he said.
ECOSOC: At the United Nations Economic and Social Council meeting Shaukat Aziz said the finance ministers reviewed the Monterrey conference and stressed the need to implement the Monterrey declaration.
Secretary-General Kofi Annan told the meeting that our challenge now was to maintain the positive spirit that led to the Monterrey consensus, and translate it into real and meaningful implementation.
He pledged to ensure that the requests addressed to him in the Monterrey consensus were carried out fully and in a timely fashion, adding that he would do all he could to ensure that our organizations stay on the same page.
Looking ahead, Kofi Annan stressed the need to ensure the success of the World Summit for Sustainable Development to be held later this year in Johannesburg by building on pledges at last year’s World Trade Organization meeting in Doha, Qatar, for a “development round” of trade negotiations.
